File- A child looks on as Israeli soldiers patrol in the Syrian town of Jubata al-Khashab, in the UN-patrolled buffer zone in the Israeli-occupied Golan Heights. AFP
"Our forces are operating in all combat zones day and night for the security of Israel," Israel Katz said on X, without elaborating.
Israeli ground troops raided a Syrian site it had already bombed on Wednesday and a day prior, Syrian state media reported.
Israel had struck the site near Kisweh, outside Damascus on Tuesday, killing six Syrian soldiers according to Damascus' foreign ministry, and bombed it again on Wednesday according to state television.
Quoting a government source, state-run news outlet SANA said that soldiers had found "surveillance and eavesdropping devices" in the area before it was hit by Israeli strikes on Tuesday.
A defence ministry official told AFP on condition of anonymity that the site was a former Syrian military base in Tal Maneh, near Kisweh.
Following the second attack on Wednesday, SANA said that Israeli troops were flown into the area to carry out a raid, "the details of which are not yet known, amid continued intensive reconnaissance flights".
The Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which relies on a network of sources on the ground, reported that the site had weapons used by Iran-backed Lebanese armed group Hezbollah, one of former Syrian ruler Bashar al-Assad's main allies.
The Observatory said the Israeli ground raid was the first of its kind since the fall of Assad in an Islamist-led rebel offensive in December.
Israel has carried out hundreds of strikes in Syria since Assad fell, and occupied much of a UN-patrolled demilitarised zone on the Syrian-held side of the armistice line between the two countries.
It has also opened talks with the interim authorities in Damascus.
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